Stronghold Legends

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Exchanging castle simulation for mediocre real-time strategy.

By Steve Butts

Things change. That's just the way life is. Just as soon as you get used to having things done one way, circumstances push you in an entirely different direction. Such is the case with the Stronghold series from Firefly Studios. What began initially as a sort of castle simulator with a little warfare on the side has slowly turned into a game about warfare that just happens to have castles in it. And given the state of the game's warfare, that couldn't be more disappointing.

Legends is about three (mostly) mythical figures: King Arthur, Siegfried and Vlad the Impaler. Each is featured in a separate campaign, which are all opened up once you complete the first few missions in Arthur's story. The sequel takes another departure from the series' emphasis on the reality of life during the age of castles and instead ventures into a more magical realm, hence the title, Legends. One-off skirmishes and three sequential skirmish challenges called Trials are also included in the game.

By selecting Arthur, Sigfried and Vlad as the main characters of the campaign, the designers have allowed themselves plenty of room to invent unique fantasy units. You'll still have to rely on the pikemen and archers, of course, for the bulk of your army, but there's nothing to stop you now from supplementing them with giants, dragons, dwarves and a vast array of other beasties.

It certainly adds a lot more excitement to the game to see giants wrecking castle walls with mighty clubs and wizards flinging sparkly spells at each other. Apart from the visual variety, the units also mix up the tactics quite a bit. Vlad's creepers, for instance, are a perfect counter for archers mounted in a high tower. Not only can creepers scale walls in the blink of an eye, but they can also corrupt enemy archers and force to fight against their allies.

There are lots of interesting strategies like this but it doesn't seem that they're all that well balanced. To continue using the creepers as an example, the unit that counters them is far too slow to actually respond to their attacks. Instead, you'll have to have them positioned all along your walls to ensure that you're protected. Our only other real complaint against these fantasy creatures is that they're usually more expensive than they're worth. We don't expect a dragon to take out a whole castle, of course, but it would be nice if they could at least fry a few archers before being shot to death.

Still, the addition of fantasy units that are unique to each faction is a real bonus for the game, especially when you consider that the rank and file human units are pretty much identical for all three sides. While we're sure it makes it easier to balance, it seems like the developers missed out a bit by not giving each faction a slightly different flavor for their basic units.

The combat still carries some echoes of the early days of the series when it wasn't such a focus. The units have no concept of collision so melees usually degenerate into huge clumps of different colored tunics mixing around. Also, your ranged units are going to pick their own targets so you'll wind up moving them back and forth to find the right position to do what you want. You can easily change the facing of a unit or its basic formation but complex formations of different types of units or specific shapes are beyond your control.